Daily Staff Writer

A faulty river water sensor may have been the cause of National Weather Service flood advisories predicting significantly lower flood waters than what actually occurred.

On Sunday night, the NWS released flash flood watches for Story County predicting river crests of between 10 and 11 feet for Squaw Creek, the North Skunk Gauge and and the South Skunk River.

However, actual crests were as much as 5 feet higher than what was predicted. Squaw Creek crested at 13 feet, the North Skunk Gauge crested at 14 feet and the South Skunk River crested at 15.9 feet.

John Feld of the National Weather Service said the discrepancy resulted from a stuck United States Geological Service (USGS) sensor on one of the waterways.

“For three of four hours the sensor was not giving us a correct reading,” Feld said. “Once we found out what the problem was, we were able to compensate for the sensor and give much more accurate predictions.”

Fortunately for Ames business owners and residents, Iowa State and the city of Ames were able to use an experimental computer flood prediction system based on experiments and sophisticated computer modeling.

Feld said he was glad the new system came up with accurate predictions and wished the university would have collaborated with the NWS.

“We would have liked to see some coordination. The new system worked very well but the university didn’t share its data with us,” Feld said.

The Iowa State officials and Ames City officials who worked on the project were not available for comment at press time.